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The protagonist of Orhan Pamuk's fiendishly engaging novel is launched into a world of hypnotic texts and (literally) Byzantine conspiracies that whirl across the steppes and forlorn frontier towns of Turkey. And with The New Life, Pamuk himself vaults from the forefront of his country's writers into the arena of world literature. Through the single act of reading a book, a young student is uprooted from his old life and identity. Within days he has fallen in love with the luminous and elusive Janan; witnessed the attempted assassination of a rival suitor; and forsaken his family to travel aimlessly through a nocturnal landscape of traveler's cafes and apocalyptic bus wrecks. As imagined by Pamuk, the result is a wondrous marriage of the intellectual thriller and high romance. Translated from the Turkish by Guneli Gun. "[A] weird, hypnotic new novel...It veers from intellectual conundrums in the Borges vein to rapturous lyricism reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez."--Wall Street Journal… (more)
Osman first comes across a book called The new life when he sees a pretty girl carrying it around in the university refectory. He spots a copy on a bookstall, reads it himself, and finds his life transformed in some weird way by what he reads. Osman and the lovely (but regrettably unavailable) Janan set out on a quest for Janan’s lost lover that involves criss-crossing Turkey on an apparently endless series of bus journeys, a considerable number of which end in deadly bus-collisions.
Repeatedly, Pamuk seems to side-step any straightforward interpretation of the book, allowing the plot to shift directions unpredictably whenever we seem to be getting close to some kind of resolution. It’s a sweetly-ironic account of young love, a study of how conspiracies and counter-conspiracies work and of how ready young people are to allow themselves to be influenced by ideas that promise to bring an escape from the everyday, a look at how the power of an idea can become detached from its originator’s intentions when it is put into a book, and it's often also a gently satirical look back at life in provincial Turkey a few decades ago. And a nostalgic homage to obsolete Turkish brand names, overnight buses, rail travel, bad films and the low-grade children’s literature of the author’s youth. But it also brings in Dante, Rilke, and a whole bunch of other apparently incongruent threads, so you need to keep your wits about you.
Puzzling, but often quite captivating. If you are looking for a book about how many angels can dance on a candy-wrapper, this is the one. ( )
«Aunque habían escuchado los mismos cuentos, los otros no habían vivido nada semejante.»
NOVALIS
The others experienced nothing like it even though they heard the same tales.
NOVALIS
Dedication
A Şekure
For Sekure
First words
Un día leí un libro y toda mi vida cambió. Ya desde las primeras páginas sentí de tal manera la fuerza del libro que creí que mi cuerpo se distanciaba de la mesa y la silla en la que estaba sentado.
I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.
Quotations
Last words
Comprendí que aquél era el final de toda mi vida. Pero yo quería volver a casa, no quería en absoluto pasar a una vida nueva, morir.
The protagonist of Orhan Pamuk's fiendishly engaging novel is launched into a world of hypnotic texts and (literally) Byzantine conspiracies that whirl across the steppes and forlorn frontier towns of Turkey. And with The New Life, Pamuk himself vaults from the forefront of his country's writers into the arena of world literature. Through the single act of reading a book, a young student is uprooted from his old life and identity. Within days he has fallen in love with the luminous and elusive Janan; witnessed the attempted assassination of a rival suitor; and forsaken his family to travel aimlessly through a nocturnal landscape of traveler's cafes and apocalyptic bus wrecks. As imagined by Pamuk, the result is a wondrous marriage of the intellectual thriller and high romance. Translated from the Turkish by Guneli Gun. "[A] weird, hypnotic new novel...It veers from intellectual conundrums in the Borges vein to rapturous lyricism reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez."--Wall Street Journal
Repeatedly, Pamuk seems to side-step any straightforward interpretation of the book, allowing the plot to shift directions unpredictably whenever we seem to be getting close to some kind of resolution. It’s a sweetly-ironic account of young love, a study of how conspiracies and counter-conspiracies work and of how ready young people are to allow themselves to be influenced by ideas that promise to bring an escape from the everyday, a look at how the power of an idea can become detached from its originator’s intentions when it is put into a book, and it's often also a gently satirical look back at life in provincial Turkey a few decades ago. And a nostalgic homage to obsolete Turkish brand names, overnight buses, rail travel, bad films and the low-grade children’s literature of the author’s youth. But it also brings in Dante, Rilke, and a whole bunch of other apparently incongruent threads, so you need to keep your wits about you.
Puzzling, but often quite captivating. If you are looking for a book about how many angels can dance on a candy-wrapper, this is the one. ( )